'Thomas Jefferson was a visionary. He designed and had built by craftsmen and slaves a magnificent home atop Monticello, an 850-foot hill overlooking Charlottesville. Eastward he could gaze across several score miles of mostly woodlands. Westward a few miles stretched the Blue Ridge Mountains that run northeast to southwest several hundred miles. In his mind, he looked beyond them three thousand miles to the Pacific Ocean. He wanted America eventually to transform the Western Hemisphere into a prosperous, peaceful, democratic "empire of liberty": "Our confederacy must be the nest from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled."' 'Historian Bill O'Neal recorded 587 gunfights among 255 gunfighters across the West. He counted only confirmed, not alleged, kills for men in two or more gunfights.

Texas was the most prone to gunfights, with 160, followed by Kansas and New Mexico with 70 each, Arizona with 60, and Oklahoma with 50. Most gunfighters were born and died in the West, with the most common boyhoods in Texas and Missouri. Two of three gunfighters died violently either in a gunfight, hanging, or suicide.' 'One fascinating finding is the gap between Hollywood and history. Despite their depiction in movies as prolific killers, Wyatt Earp and Sundance Kid apparently never gunned down anyone and Jesse James only one. As for the top ten primary occupations, there were 110 lawmen, 75 cowboys, 54 ranchers, 46 farmers, 45 rustlers, 35 hired gunmen, 34 soldiers, 26 bandits, 24 gamblers, and 22 laborers then further down the list 14 train robbers, 8 bank robbers, and 3 bounty hunters.'.